L'industrie de la fourrure et les trappeurs Indiens...

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Suffering in the Wild: The Fur Industry and Indigenous Trappers


"The fur trade is the most insidious source of prejudice against native peoples. The Fur Institute of Canada and the government drag token Indians all over Europe to get support for the white fashion and fur industry as if natives were some sort of noble gods. In contrast, back at home, they cut education programs that could get natives out of subsistence jobs like fur trapping."—Paul Hollingsworth, founder Native/Animal Brotherhood

After a decade of lackluster sales and plummeting profits, the fur industry is shamelessly attempting to justify its bloody trade by claiming to care about indigenous people.

The fur wars of the 1970s and 1980s permanently linked fur, in the minds of consumers, with the barbaric cruelty of steel-jawed traps and the hideous cramped confinement of cage-raised furbearers. With increasing numbers of compassionate people turning their backs on cruelty, the fur industry now alleges to support the traditional trapping lifestyle of aboriginal people. While some indigenous cultures have trapped animals for sustenance, killing animals for the sake of fashion and vanity is irreconcilable with indigenous philosophies of respect for the land and the animals.

The Native/Animal Brotherhood notes that the fur industry is anti-traditional and that the fur industry was a primary force behind the historical subjugation of native peoples. Paul Hollingsworth, founder of the Native/Animal Brotherhood states: "For 300 years the native people have been tools of the fur trade. The fur trade took our land, our culture, and our animal brothers. Once we were one with Mother Earth and all her creatures. It's time we listened to the animals' voices instead of trading in their blood.”

According to Statistics Canada, only 3% of all fur available for sale in North America comes from native trapping. Making an average of $225 per year from the sale of animal skins, aboriginal trappers are paid a pittance for doing the dirty, exhausting, bloody work of an industry that cares nothing about the indigenous people and even less about the animals. While the fur industry claims that aboriginal survival depends on trapping and the sale of fur, clearly, the continuation of trapping as the sole source of income will keep aboriginal people below even subsistence-level incomes.

http://www.furisdead.com/indians.asp

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"Being forced to kill one of his animal brothers is an act distasteful to any of us, and to kill for such little reason as to make a fur coat is horrible indeed. ... no traditional native would dream of killing forty little animals to create a piece of clothing one large animal would give them." Hollingsworth further states: "The fur industry took us away from our traditional ways. It is time we reunited with our animal brothers, to seek a world which respects Mother Earth and all beings." [4, p26-7]

Paul Hollingsworth, founder of Native / Animal Brotherhood

http://www.furisdead.com